Book Clubs Column by Julie Hale

SIBLINGS FOR HIREPatrick DeWitt’s one-of-a-kind Western, The Sisters Brothers, has the trappings of a classic but an attitude that’s decidedly contemporary. Charlie and Eli Sisters are brothers and guns for hire. When they’re enlisted by a wealthy settler to locate and eliminate a prospector named Herman Kermit Warm, they leave Oregon for California, embarking on the adventure...

Book Clubs Column by Julie Hale

Fool by Christopher Moore Moore’s ingenious send-up of King Lear is sure to delight Shakespeare fans and seduce those readers who—thanks to the tedium of high school English class—may have developed an early aversion to the Bard. The book’s spirited narration is provided by Pocket, King Lear’s fool. An orphan who was raised by nuns, Pocket is a former actor and...

Book Clubs Column by Julie Hale

Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American LifeBy John AdamsThe genius whose complex works altered the course of modern classical music, Adams has written a fascinating memoir about his development as a composer. Adams, who made his name with the innovative operas Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer, grew up in New England and started writing music at the age of 10. He studied...

Book Clubs Column by Julie Hale

Stern Men By Elizabeth Gilbert Before she wrote the memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Gilbert penned this humorous, warm-hearted novel about life in 1970s New England, now reissued in a new paperback edition. The islands of Fort Niles and Courne Haven—two lobstering communities off the coast of Maine—have a rivalry that's several centuries old and grounded in the competition between local...

Book Clubs Column by Julie Hale

A Thousand Splendid SunsAfter more than two years on the bestseller lists, Hosseini's internationally acclaimed novel is now available in paperback. In his masterful follow - up to The Kite Runner, he takes readers back to Afghanistan, presenting events from that troubled country's past - including the Soviet takeover and the rise of the Taliban - as they appear from the perspectives of...

Book Clubs Column by Julie Hale

Fans of period fiction will love Alexander's debut, a richly suspenseful novel set in Victorian London that blends romance, mystery and history. The book features a lovely young heroine named Emily Bromley, who marries Philip, the Viscount Ashton, simply because her mother urges her to do so. Not long after the wedding, Philip dies while on a hunting trip in Africa, a loss that Emily...

Book Clubs Column by Julie Hale

Commander Adam Dalgliesh, James' beloved investigator, returns in this riveting follow-up to her previous book, Death in Holy Orders (2001). A small, private institution in London devoted to the years between the First and Second World Wars, the mysterious Dupayne Museum contains a particularly disturbing exhibit called the Murder Room, which commemorates the most sinister slayings of that...

Book Clubs Column by Julie Hale

The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint When seven-year-old Edgar is run over by a mailman on an Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona, his head is crushed, but he survives. So begins this wonderfully original coming-of-age novel, a book by turns heartbreaking and hilarious. Abandoned by his family, Edgar is taken to a nearby hospital after the accident, where he meets some of the seediest characters...

Book Clubs Column by Julie Hale

Benjamin Black (the pen name of award-winning Irish author John Banville) delivers another captivating noir narrative featuring pathologist Garret Quirke. Set in Dublin in the 1950s, The Silver Swan is the sequel to Black's best-selling mystery, Christine Falls (2007). When Quirke is unexpectedly reunited with an old college chum named Billy Hunt, the encounter is hardly a lighthearted one. The...